Years of Refusal: Metal Gear Solid's Denial of Standardized Controls

Cover Story: Despite some small advances, the Metal Gear Solid series continues to struggle with its controls.

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apcom's upcoming Lost Planet 3 is a familiar game on a basic level. The game won't be out for months but you'll know it immediately. It's the controls. Move with the left stick, look with the right stick, hold the left trigger to aim, pull the right trigger to shoot. It's a whole lot like Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Gears of War. It isn't even too far a cry from first-person shooters like Call of Duty: Black Ops. Bungie's Halo made consoles a home for games about guns and its controls have become the mitochondrial eve for action gaming in the modern world, from blockbusters like Uncharted to all but forgotten curios like John Woo's Stranglehold.

Hideo Kojima's iconic stealth series hasn't simplified its controls since the first entry came out in 1998, even as controls in other games about action, stealth and shooting have become more homogenized. Games known for presenting deep interfaces, like Splinter Cell, have taken up the mantle of familiarity Metal Gear Solid has stayed steadfastly bizarre and complex. 2010's Splinter Cell: Conviction for example did away the awkward, delicate manipulation of the 13-button/dual analog/D-pad controller made ubiquitous by Sony's Dual Shock, in favor of the more familiar aim-and-shoot controls players already understand.

Back in 1998, there was really no reason to question Metal Gear Solid's controls. Games in three-dimensional environments were still largely a new art, and creators like Kojima were still figuring out what works and what doesn't in polygonal worlds. To that end, MGS didn't play a whole lot different than its predecessor Metal Gear 2 and in fact simplified some things. Clicking the X button on the PlayStation controller makes Snake crouch, whereas on the MSX you had to hold the spacebar and N on the keyboard. New features like holding a D-Pad direction against a wall for cover were unique hallmarks of the game. Metal Gear Solid's immense popularity guaranteed that its sequel carried over the interface, even keeping features like aiming weapons with the Dual Shock's square button while other games were finally using the right analog stick for aiming duties, something that had become a common standard by the time Snake Eater came out in 2004.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, rather than take lessons from other games of the time, kept Metal Gear Solid 2's basic controls, and added an intimidating layer of complexity by giving the D-Pad unique functions, both for stealth and the melee system called Close Quarters Combat. Combinations of D-Pad inputs coupled with pressing the circle button could be used for flashy takedowns and restraints when facing soldiers in the jungle, each move different depending on which direction you're facing the enemy from and whether they're fighting back.

What did nearly a decade of layering complexity on Metal Gear Solid's controls do for the series? For one, it gave the game an overbearing reputation. The audience for the series shrank following Metal Gear Solid 2; that game sold 7 million copies in its first two years on shelves, whereas Metal Gear Solid 3 sold just under 4 million over a similar period. The old switcheroo of introducing Raiden as MGS 2's primary character certainly chased some fans away, but its difficulty was also an influence, hence why Kojima Productions moved to make Metal Gear Solid 4's controls more approachable.

One of MGS 4 assistant producer Ryan Payton's duties on the game was to help update the game's controls. Guns of the Patriot's solution to toning down the series' complexity was to make the controls more uniform with the environment defining contextual actions rather than asking the player to remember them. In a 2007 interview with Gamasutra, Payton said, "[Metal Gear Solid 2], for example: if you're going to knock on the wall to attract guards, that's with the circle button, but if you want to go up a ladder, that's with triangle. And all that stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. So everything now is focused onto an action button, which is the triangle button on the PlayStation 3 controller, and it's all contextualized. If you walk up to a ladder, an icon with the triangle button appears, obviously telling you that you can go up the ladder with the triangle button."

Contextual action wasn't all that changed. MGS 4 finally introduced manual aiming to satisfy western tastes that had grown commoditized by those aforementioned shooters like Halo and Gears of War. All these changes though, didn't serve to make Metal Gear Solid 4 any more familiar on a control level to other games. If anything, the changes actually made the game more complex, more of a challenge to hold in your head as you play. The X button alone has four separate functions depending on if you're moving, standing still, or against a wall. The triangle action button Payton described has eight different functions depending on context. Is Solid Snake on the ground? Press triangle to play dead. Is he aiming a gun? Press triangle to use the scope. Metal Gear Solid 4 didn't bend to convention. It became stranger.

This complexity has made the series forbidding certainly, but that's never been its only effect. Kojima Productions' refusal to make Metal Gear play like most other games has also made mastering it as much a part of the story's connection with the player as the cutscenes and art. Modern games offer their spectacle to you on a silver platter, but Metal Gear Solid doesn't allow you to just easily become a super spy. Snake is a legendarily skilled soldier so becoming him shouldn't just be a matter of pressing forward and shooting blindly. The balletic martial arts CQC moves shouldn't just be a few taps of the X button away. Skill should be necessary to reap the game's greatest rewards, and its complicated controls are the barrier you must clear to make the greatest connection possible with the game. Once that barrier's cleared, the link between the game's world and the player is solid in a way few games replicate.

The tradition goes on. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance may be a simpler game to play than Metal Gear Solid, but its central hook, direct control of Raiden's sword swipes, is rooted in the unusual control idea of the series' past and is itself hard to initial get a handle on. Metal Gear Solid 2 has a very simple version of those sword controls in its final act, and though it's not as smooth as what's in Rising, it's certainly easier to execute. Playing Rising at this point feels a bit like flailing your arms in mid-air, but even the game's E3 demo hints at the precision the game will demand of you. Dummies in the demo's training ground hold hostages, requiring you slash with Raiden's sword in a very particular way. It won't be easy, but that's why the Metal Gear series is good. It asks you to do difficult things and rewards you for the effort with a singular experience.

Anthony John Agnello

Anthony is a writer living in New York whose work has appeared in Fast Company, Edge, The Gameological Society and many other
publications. His great hope is that someone makes a game that looks
and feels like upstate New York and that the game will be Klonoa 3. He
owns two beaches and likes long walks on cats. Follow him on Twitter
@ajohnagnello.

Uhm no

The "tank" controls for the Resident Evil games (and therein in some instances Silent Hill) took away from the experience somewhat though it added on to the since of dread. Shinji Mikami updated the controls somewhat not to take away the experience but to be in line for what he had in mind for the game series at that point. What has taken place afterward was a result who took the reigns after he was let go from Capcom, and that is something people like you seem to not get.

you have to take liberties with

fixed control schemes and initial comfort in order to introduce new mechanics for different types of games. the problem is motivating people to learn your idiosyncrosies, and get to the harmonious point of transition where the break in standardization elegantly flows into the gameplay and contexts that necessitate your decisive aversion to their expectations.

personally, i'm a firm believer in making an innovative or unique game, with a clear identity and vision, that requires something unorthodox as an interface... a lack of inspiration from the moment of inception will relate to everything, all the way to our final play experience, where we end up with an also-ran, contemporary game that's worth a rental and may be the oft-forgotten highlight of a future adult's childhood, but not much else.

there's a difference between having necessary roughness and being thoughtlessly broken... MGS is not the latter.

CQC is genius.

I remember many people giving up on MGS3 because of the controls combined with the camera. But once you get proficient at CQC the game really opens up and you become the extremely lethal secret agent you were born to be. That was probably the best pure sneaking game. MGS4 was radically different for me and I think a few more people fell off because of it. But I feel that Solid 4 is the easiest to dominate once you get comfortable.

I thought this statement summed up the attraction to this series: "Kojima Productions' refusal to make Metal Gear play like most other games has also made mastering it as much a part of the story's connection with the player." This series has always progressed and never rested on it's laurels. There has been a vast improvement in the portable titles as well. Portable Ops was not really enjoyable for me but Peacewalker was a perfect fit on the PSP.

No problem

I think the controls in MGS are fine. Apart from the d-pad and sticks there's only 8 buttons you really use. Its not rocket science - anyone should be able to adapt to any new control system within a few minutes.

Stop this nonesense

Stop asking to have every genre fit into the same already-overused OVER-THE-SHOULDER AMERICKHAN THESE COLORS DON'T RUN SHOOTING genre. MGS1's simple bird view is still more fun to use than most of that crap, and it doesn't have to change because some whiney kids refuse to get into it because it looks "outdated"

I'm tired of seeing every genre, including RPG's, being slowly melted into that genre.

Boy, my IQ dropped just reading that

I fail to see how using more natural control schemes is somehow connected with whatever weird redneck-fratbro hybrid stereotype you were going for (who the hell do you hang out with?). The same reason why platformers use the primary face button (A/X) for jumping, because it's easier to familiarize with a game when it fits into a gamer's natural muscle memory. And you know why MGS dropped the overhead camera starting with MGS3:S? Because games are more friendly when you can see more than five feet ahead of you, especially ones with more complex environments than the original MGS (which were simple enough that the dev team mapped them out with Legos).

Seriously, the inane look-at-me-making-fun-of-CoD folks are more annoying than the people they're targeting.

I can't be the only one

Who is often times baffled as to why Japanese developers just can't seem to understand that complicated, obtuse, absurd and bizzare control schemes have no place in a modern video game. Metal Gear Solid 1 - 4 is a great example (Just so you're aware, I am a HUGE MGS fan). But so is Yakuza: Dead Souls. That game could have been a great success in America. It could have launched a successful franchise in the west that never caught on like it did in the East.

However, Sega decided to not change a damn thing about the completely absurd shooting mechanics in the game. It was like the developers behind the game haven't played a shooter since 1999. It was so laughably horrible that I couldn't believe it was real. If they had just tweaked the controls to make them comparable to what western audiences expect, they could have had a hit. Instead, the often times clueless japanese made some terrible control design decisions and expected us in the West to accpet it and love it...We didn't.

And look at Shadows of the Damned or Resident Evil 5. While both great games, they refused to update their control schemes to compete with modern games, and instead opted to stay in the past and frustrate gamers. You don't see western developers doing this. I could go on and on. Lost Planet 1 & 2 had some absurd control problems, usually involving your aiming sights not moving 1:1 with the camera. And don't get me started on the infuriatingly long animations that they didn't bother fixing for the sequel.

Then we have Quantum Theory, which should win an award for worst aiming in any shooter ever made. Or Vampire Rain, which should win the same award, only the get kicked in the nuts when they come up to accept it. Steel Battalion, Rise of Nightmares, Mindjack, I could go on and on. Name a Japanese game, and they fuck up the controls somehow. I'm talking about shooter here mostly, but you can fill in the blanks with any genere and get the same results.

They did a great job with Binary Domain and Valyria Chronicles, but for as many Japanese games as I've played, I can only think of two that didn't completely botch the controls in some way or another. Yakuza: Dead Souls pisses me off the most though. If they had just fixed the god damn thing before releasing it in the west, every single review wouldn't have warned everyone that the shooting is terrible, and people may have bought it for another open world zombie slayer. Instead, everyone I know avoided it because of all the bad press surrounding the controls.

You often hear how stubborn the Japanese are, especially with their big egos. I guess it must be true, because even if the entire West is telling them that something they do sucks, they rarely fix it. Just look at Lost Planet 2, which ignored years of complaints and suggestions, and fixed absolutely NONE of the problems.

last paragraph

The games you wrote about sold well in Japan - that's their core market. Why should they do what anybody tells them? Its that sort of attitude that leads to the homogenised crap you get out of the big Western studios.

I like more complex controls!

"Who is often times baffled as to why Japanese developers just can't seem to understand that complicated, obtuse, absurd and bizzare control schemes have no place in a modern video game."

Sorry but I get tons of enjoyment out of this. I loved Gunvalkyrie on Xbox. Other games with intense controls like Viewtiful Joe, Metal Gear Solid, the old Biohazard games. No problem at all with unique, complex controls.